Thursday, February 5, 2009

Damages - Recap & Review - I Agree, it Wasn’t Funny

Damages I Agree, it Wasn’t Funny

Original Air Date: Feb 4, 2008

Tom R. - TwoCents Staff Writertom@thetwocents.com

Let’s start with the ending. A gunshot is fired and someone walks away from the site. In most shows, you’d hear a loud, echoed shot with some sort of human debris splattering across at least one window, and probably a lingering horn beep as the victim slumps over the steering wheel. The brilliance of this show, however, is that they make so much of an impact while you barely realize it’s happened. The focus is on the car’s exterior, not the characters inside, and a muffled pop results in a small disturbance in the windshield. It’s what you would notice if you were walking by at the time.

4 comments:

Let’s start with the ending. A gunshot is fired and someone walks away from the site. In most shows, you’d hear a loud, echoed shot with some sort of human debris splattering across at least one window, and probably a lingering horn beep as the victim slumps over the steering wheel. The brilliance of this show, however, is that they make so much of an impact while you barely realize it’s happened. The focus is on the car’s exterior, not the characters inside, and a muffled pop results in a small disturbance in the windshield. It’s what you would notice if you were walking by at the time.

The episode opens with Patty’s “Seed of Anger” speech that has been used to promote the season. She makes it clear that she’s focused on UNR, not Purcell. If Purcell gets caught in the middle, she’s more than willing to write him off as a casualty of war. As Ellen finishes Patty’s sentence, her focus on Patty is not lost either. Patty’s suspicions of her protégé grow more and more through the episode, particularly when Uncle Pete digs into the background of the case planted by the FBI.

As the Bureau threatens to pull the plug on Ellen, she invites Patty to her apartment for a meeting. She admits that she had been approached by the FBI, but tells Patty that she refused to cooperate. She plays herself off as being suspicious about the case, and puts doubts in Patty’s head about others in the office who may be “vulnerable”. More than ever, it’s an effective mental duel between the two, and you can only wonder whether those doubts took hold.

Kendrick has paid off Purcell so that a UNR merger will not be disrupted by the Aracite question or the West Virginia investigation. Patty tries her best to get Douglas Schiff to block the deal, but after a meeting with the mysterious Dave Powell, Schiff approves the merger. Powell also meets with Patty’s husband Phil to warn him about the FBI’s interest in Patty.

We also find out that Wes has been keeping tabs on Ellen, assessing whether or not she’s a threat. His meeting with Frobisher’s ally Detective Messer seems to show who he’s aligned with. We also find out that the man who attacked Ellen is still alive, and Uncle Pete urges him to leave the country as the FBI scrutiny grows tighter.

Tate Donavan directs the episode. It seems encouraging that with him and Mario van Peebles playing both sides of the camera, the producers really want to make sure they’ve got a team attitude going. Kudos for that too.

So there’s my two cents…I’d love to hear where your thoughts. Drop in your comments or send me a note at: tom@thetwocents.com.